Civil rights group ColorOfChange announced Thursday that the Hillary Clinton campaign has agreed to stop accepting contributions from lobbyists and campaign committees that serve the private prison industry.
The announcement came after a series of protests from activist groups about the ties between private prison lobbyists and the Clinton campaign. In one act of protest, United We Dream’s Juan Carlos Ramos interrupted a Clinton speech earlier this month to raise the issue.
The protests began after a report by The Intercept in July detailing how many of Clinton’s top fundraisers simultaneously serve as lobbyists at firms representing the biggest names in the private prison industry, including Geo Group and Correction Corporation of America.
According to Fusion, the Clinton campaign promised to donate any previous direct contributions from private prison lobbyists to charity.
ColorOfChange Executive Director Rashad Robinson said the Clinton campaign’s decision came after meetings with representatives of Black Lives Matter, Get Equal, Presente, and United We Dream.
Photo: Black Lives Matter and Get Equal protestors Angela Peoples and Rian Brown hold signs as Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks to guests gathered for a campaign event on the campus of Case Western Reserve University.
IT’S EVEN WORSE THAN WE THOUGHT.
What we’re seeing right now from Donald Trump is a full-on authoritarian takeover of the U.S. government.
This is not hyperbole.
Court orders are being ignored. MAGA loyalists have been put in charge of the military and federal law enforcement agencies. The Department of Government Efficiency has stripped Congress of its power of the purse. News outlets that challenge Trump have been banished or put under investigation.
Yet far too many are still covering Trump’s assault on democracy like politics as usual, with flattering headlines describing Trump as “unconventional,” “testing the boundaries,” and “aggressively flexing power.”
The Intercept has long covered authoritarian governments, billionaire oligarchs, and backsliding democracies around the world. We understand the challenge we face in Trump and the vital importance of press freedom in defending democracy.
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IT’S BEEN A DEVASTATING year for journalism — the worst in modern U.S. history.
We have a president with utter contempt for truth aggressively using the government’s full powers to dismantle the free press. Corporate news outlets have cowered, becoming accessories in Trump’s project to create a post-truth America. Right-wing billionaires have pounced, buying up media organizations and rebuilding the information environment to their liking.
In this most perilous moment for democracy, The Intercept is fighting back. But to do so effectively, we need to grow.
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I’M BEN MUESSIG, The Intercept’s editor-in-chief. It’s been a devastating year for journalism — the worst in modern U.S. history.
We have a president with utter contempt for truth aggressively using the government’s full powers to dismantle the free press. Corporate news outlets have cowered, becoming accessories in Trump’s project to create a post-truth America. Right-wing billionaires have pounced, buying up media organizations and rebuilding the information environment to their liking.
In this most perilous moment for democracy, The Intercept is fighting back. But to do so effectively, we need to grow.
That’s where you come in. Will you help us expand our reporting capacity in time to hit the ground running in 2026?
We’re independent of corporate interests. Will you help us?
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